Scraphappy October 2020

You might have noticed (if you catch my social media occasionally) that recently I’ve been boasting sharing the reviews I’ve been getting from recipients of a #HookerRing

The most popular options are stamped with a metal punch, to give a repeated design over a strip of silver, that I’ve previously sawn, filed and sanded to size

I had a photo of all of the variables on my hand to share with you here, but it must have looked dangerously saucy; WordPress has blocked it !

Here’s one of the variants instead:

Well, I’m still not as good at stamping metal as I’d like to be, which often means that I miss-hit a punch when I’m trying to stamp the pattern in. Especially if I sneeze at the same time as trying to hit it (note to self, keep fewer flowers in my studio and do more dusting)

I’ve also been crocheting since May*, making my first proper project, which has been FABULOUS. Slow, and often I’ve had to redo a square 4 times, and I redid all of the first 8, but oh, I’ve enjoyed it far more than I thought was possible. So much so that when I finished it yesterday, I began a cardigan for #MrG.

I’m in the midst of developing some stitch markers to add to my gadget range (I had a request from a customer) and the first batch have been very successfully beta tested by a couple of people, so I’m now about to adapt the design to try and accommodate their super constructive feedback.

One of the drawbacks of prototypes is the potential waste. Of course, the drawback of not making and testing a prototype is greater waste 🙂

Although silver has increased (and continues to) in price massively this year, it’s still my time that is the most costly part of a small item, so I hate to waste anything and I often make my prototypes in silver because that is easier for me to recycle successfully than copper.

I learned from my crochet that a stitch keeper was essential (for people who don’t crochet; when you set it aside the working stitch is effectively a very loose loop of thread that’s easy to catch and then undo all your earlier stitches) I had been using using a plain, large jump-ring to catch this, but when I created a shadow stamp again on one of my pieces, I had a light bulb moment, and made a stitch keeper to match my hooker ring.

It works really well, and so I’m going to add them to my shops in the next couple of days.

Heart StitchKeeper

The stamped bit is made from the rest of the ruined hooker ring blank – I stamp all the way down the strip, filing then sanding either end, sawing the design off, filing and sanding the new end again, and then once I have all my tiny pieces, I grip them in my pliers and do some more filing and sanding. This is far more cost effective than tossing the whole 7cm of waste into the ‘melt it down’ pot

Then I take any long left over and thick wire ends from other projects, file and sand (there’s far more filing and sanding involved in jewellery making than you might think!) and hammer one end to flatten, finally soldering on the design. That then anneals the piece, enabling me to coil it.

A bit of pickling and a trip in Betty, and boom.. Stitch keeper 🙂

*I’ve been making the Natures Walk blanket using the Open Fields colourway, with the addition of some purple ( I wanted it to pick out all the colours in our front room) and some extra squares from Elle. I found the combination of charts, and the traditionally written pattern, in conjunction with Bella Coco instructional videos and my books incredibly helpful. Links to all these resources here:

Black Sheep Wools (where I ordered the pattern and yarn)

Bella Coco website

Elle website

Link to brilliant Crochetopedia book (but bought in a local shop, not here!)

The rest of the #ScrapHappy gang are:

Kate , Gun, Titti, Heléne, Eva, Sue, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, Jill, Claire, Jan,
Moira, Sandra, Linda, Chris, Nancy, Alys, Kerry, Claire, Jean,
Joanne, Jon, Hayley, Dawn (well, you are here already), Gwen, Connie, Bekki,
Sue L, Sunny, Kjerstin, Vera, and Nanette